


Over the Hills and Far Away

by Tammany



Category: Mary Poppins (1964), Mary Poppins - P. L. Travers, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Endings, Gen, Partings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-22 11:24:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4833578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is a sort of odd pastiche, blending Sherlock with Mary Poppins. Yes, it's been done before, with similar motives I suspect. But I wanted to try this to see how it came off. </p><p>The core version of Mary Poppins I am drawing from is P.L. Travers--a much more brisk, but also much more seriously, sternly magical version than Disney's version. That said, there are elements of Disney's version that are welcome in. Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent is atrocious, but his sweet, loyal, constant affection for his Mary is worth giving to Lestrade. And I can imagine Mycroft secretly loving the song about the Birdwoman on the steps of St. Paul's--he's a man who serves for a reason, and he seems to care about people, so long as they're kind enough to keep their distance and give him a bit of air and privacy.</p><p>Anyway. See what you think. I had a good time, even if it doesn't work, but I hope it blends the two worlds gracefully...including a Sherlock who would much prefer to be Peter Pan than inherit the job of Mary Poppins/Mycroft, taking care of the world's immature brats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over the Hills and Far Away

Autumn weather was arriving, Sherlock thought, as he strode along the walks of Regent’s Park. The temperature was dropping, engaged in a slow downhill course from about 23C heading toward 15C: still well short of freezing, but giving strong warning that the Belstaff would soon have to come out of the closet. Today, though, was warm enough that Sherlock had taken his walk wearing only his blazer.

He smirked, knowing Mycroft would scold if he were there to see him. “Still dressing like a school boy,” he’d snip, considering his brother. He had a point—Sherlock’s mix-and-match trousers, blazers, and shirts were much of a kind with the tidy boys’ uniforms, lacking only the branding of a school coat of arms or logo on the lapel and school colors in the fabrics and trim.  It was a less formal look than that of a businessman in a more tailored two- or three-piece, and far less formal than Mycroft’s chosen style.

Which was, of course, why he loved it, and reveled in Mycroft’s little, disapproving clucks and tuts. He had no intention of ever joining his brother in the ranks of the grown-ups. It was one thing for Mycroft to play the prim nanny…Sherlock had no such ambition.

He leaned his head back, letting the warm wind ruffle his curls and caress his face, indulging in a sensuality he felt safe in. He gave brief consideration to slipping up onto the rooftops with a kite, or buying bouquets of balloons and seeing if he could float down gently from the roof of Baker Street to land like a ballet dancer on Mrs. Hudson’s bins. It was tempting, flirtatious weather, the last warm kiss of summer before the frost arrived. The last waltz of the west wind, before the north wind brought in the chill.

Thinking that, he paused.

Pausing, he looked, uncertainly, checking the motion of the park trees and the flutter of the grass. His mind, ever observant, projected the angle of the wind against the compass rose of the directions. He frowned. He dug in his blazer pocket and drew out his smartphone. He checked the local weather.

Temperature 19C, partly cloudy, wind due west.

He checked further, tapping into college weather stations, into the readings from Heathrow.

Wind west...due west.

It was ridiculous, he thought. The wind was from the west so often. Most of the time, really. Certainly from springtime on, as the waters of the Gulf of Mexico warmed and the Caribbean waters stirred under the equatorial sun and the Gulf Stream drew ocean and air currents both toward British shores. The west wind meant nothing. Nothing.

Well…

No more than the east wind did, to a Holmes. Which he had to confess was another matter.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket and tugged the blazer back into its most flattering lines. Then he headed west over the bridge across the boating lake, opening up his stride, pretending to himself that he wasn’t hurrying home to Baker Street.

He was, though.

He opened the street door with more energy than was strictly needed and prodded through the mail with a frown. Finding nothing but adverts for sales at Tesco, he called to Mrs. Hudson, “Did anything arrive for me today?”

Mrs. Hudson bellowed something incomprehensible back at him. Logic suggested she was out in the back courtyard fussing with the bins and the little “garden” she’d set up with a folding card table, two chairs, a cluster of potted plants, and a garden gnome. He called back louder, “Never mind,” and thundered up the stairs to the flat.

John was there, standing uneasily in his work clothes—a light, pale sports jacket, a crisp oxford shirt, neat dark trousers…a professional man. His face, though, brooded, the anger and worry that were always near the surface showing clearly. It was a sign of Sherlock’s own unease that he failed to notice the doctor was distressed. Instead Sherlock shot straight to the little table-desk between the front windows and woke the laptop, rapidly jetting from mail site to mail site, from private communication link to secret service drop. He scowled.

“Tea, John,” he said, dropping into the desk chair and contemplating the screen. He waved one languid hand to suggest his friend make haste to the kitchen and the electric kettle forthwith.

“Mary’s gone,” John said, instead. “Mary and the baby. They didn’t leave a message.”

“Give them an hour,” Sherlock murmured. “There’s a special on diapers at Tesco’s and half London will queue up.” Thus the proof that an attentive man could turn even the discarded adverts to his advantage…

“No, they’re gone,” John snapped, temper frayed to the breaking point. “Suitcases gone, clothes out of the dresser. Gone.”

Sherlock felt a shiver pass through. “Gone? When?”

“How would I know?” John snarled. “They were there this morning. I thought Mycroft was supposed to keep an eye on them. Could they have been kidnapped without him knowing?”

“No,” Sherlock said. He said nothing more. The data wasn’t in.

The west wind washed over the back of the building, rattling a loose bit of gutter and soughing against the window of Sherlock’s bedroom. It was a faint sound, but it pushed Sherlock’s tension up another notch.

“When did the wind turn around?” he asked John.

“What?” John blinked at him. “What?”

“The wind, John. When did it switch? It was coming from the north earlier this week.”

“What does the wind have to do with anything? My wife and daughter are missing.”

The wind had nothing to do with anything, except when it did. Except when you were tied to certain...lineages. Certain traditions. Traditions Sherlock reveled in even as he pretended to have no connection at all—unlike Mycroft, whose entire demeanor whispered at his lines of descent.

“North wind, south wind, east wind, west—blow me to the place that I like best,” Sherlock murmured, and rose, pacing back to his bedroom, John trailing behind.

“What’s that?”

“Nothing. Just an old rhyme Mycroft used to say when I was little,” Sherlock said. He stalked to the window that looked over the back garden in a flash, tore wide the curtains, and flung up the sash. The golden light shone off the pavement and the white-painted privacy walls. Mrs. Hudson gaped up at him as she knelt on one of her chairs, attempting to hang a garden basket full of trailing petunias.

“Did anything arrive for me in the mail, Mrs. Hudson?” he thundered down at her.

She stared. “Sherlock, what’s got into you? It’s not like I won’t be in soon.”

“Did anything arrive?” He was fast losing patience. “A package? A big envelope?”

“Well, ye—“

“Bring it up, woman.” He slammed the window shut and spun back, storming past John, who barely dodged the oncoming juggernaut that was his friend and former roommate. “John, TEA, dammit.” He flounced heavily down into his armchair, steepled his fingers, and scowled.

“Bloody hell,” John sputtered. “Sherlock…”

“I heard you,” Sherlock said. “I would not be this concerned had I not. But one must determine the difference between symptoms and causes. Be quiet and fetch tea.” Then he fell silent.

Below, Mrs. Hudson slammed into her kitchen and went rummaging about, for all the world like a mouse in dry leaves. They could hear her grumbling, “I know I put them somewhere safe…”

John stomped heavily out to the kitchen, setting up the basics for two large mugs of tea. By the time he was back Mrs. Hudson had arrived, carrying a small handful of mail and a box that had to have been hand delivered—the quaint, pretty wrapping paper was intact and unmarred, and a soft pink-rose ribbon wound its way uncrushed, finishing with a pert and well-tied bow.

Sherlock took the envelopes, but not the box, though John and Mrs. Hudson grumbled. It was so obviously the most interesting thing in the pile. Instead he flipped through plain envelope after plain envelope, muttering “Stupid client, stupid client, junk, advert, stupid client, bill, stupid client, stupid client…hmm. Bank.” His long fingers slid under the flap of the envelop and ripped it open quickly. He tugged out the neatly typed sheet and drew his breath. He frowned. He shoved the rejected mail at John, lay the bank mail on his knee, and drew his phone out of his pocket again. He dialed.

He waited.

There was no answer.

There was no pause to reset to voice mail.

There was no tone suggesting one begin recording.

After a time the line went dead.

John, who’d deposited the excess mail on the mantel and held it in place with the traditional Sherlockian method of stabbing it with a large knife, frowned. Not everyone could read Sherlock clearly when he was in a fuss, but John had some experience. Sherlock was upset—deeply upset.

Sherlock dialed again, a different number this time.

“Anthea? What? No…no, this is not the wrong number. I dialed…yes. I’m trying to reach…” He paused, and paled. “Oh. I see. Yes. Yes, I’ll try to reach her there.” He hung up, though, and didn’t dial again. Instead he stared bleakly at the little box still held in Mrs. Hudson’s hands.

“What is it, dear?” Mrs. Hudson said. “What’s wrong?”

Sherlock shook his head. He looked at her, and asked once again, “When did the wind switch direction?”

Mrs. Hudson cocked her head and thought. “Mid-morning, or thereabouts. I’d been meaning to hang that basket, but the north wind came right down the alley and into the courtyard and tossed it everywhere when I tried to put it up first thing. But it shifted sometime later. I noticed when I had a cuppa around ten. Why?”

Sherlock shook his head, eyes suddenly sad.

“Nothing. It just gives me a frame of reference to work with.” He looked at John. “Any sign of when Mary and the baby left?”

John’s eyes were worried. “Mid-morning, at a guess. There were plates from the baby’s mid-morning snack, and Mary’s cup was in the sink.”

Sherlock nodded to himself. He reached out for the little box. Mrs. Hudson handed it to him.

He opened it slowly and carefully, with a precision and focus he usually only granted his experiments and his deductive activities. The rose-pink ribbon was untied, smoothed, and coiled up, then tucked into the breast pocket of Sherlock’s blazer. The wrapping paper was drawn free, the one tab of sellotape picked off cleanly. Sherlock took time to examine the paper—a sepia ground with a Victorian-looking print of roses and compass roses, as though someone had wanted to make a small visual pun combining the two.

He folded the paper and added it to his breast pocket. Then he lifted the lid.

Inside was a key ring holding a bouquet of old-fashioned keys, and an ornate pocket watch on a chain. Sherlock’s hands shook as he drew both out.

“What are they?” John asked.

Sherlock shot him the old, familiar “moron” glare, and John scowled back. “You know what I mean,” he grumbled.

Sherlock nodded. Rather than answer, he flipped the watch open with the edge of his nail.

The watch face was ornamented with delicate enameled roses—very Victorian in their style and sentiment. On the inner face of the case was a group portrait—the Holmes family, gazing calmly out at the artist, together in a way that was hard to explain. Mummy and Father, Sherlock and Mycroft.

A slip of paper fluttered to the carpet. John leaned over and picked it up, reading reflexively.

“ _Adieu_ , brother-mine. I’ll see you at the back of the west wind. M.”

He held it out to Sherlock, eyes asking questions he could not find a way to turn into words.

Sherlock took the slip and folded it, and folded it, and folded it, till it was a hard white pill. He tucked it in the box under the soft cotton lining. He closed the watch. John could see the compass rose etched on the outer face.

“They’re gone,” he said, quietly. “Mycroft and Mary and the baby. They’re gone.”

Sherlock nodded.

“Are they coming back?”

Sherlock touched the watch, and the bundle of keys. “I suspect not. I doubt we’ll see them if they do,” he said.

“They’re not…dead?”

Sherlock shrugged. “We may hear they are.”

“You called Anthea…”

“There is no such person working for the Traffic Department.”

John blinked. “Ah.”

“The number I was given to call is MI6’s trouble line.”

“Ah.” John gulped. “Are they safe? Mary and little Em?”

Sherlock’s mouth quivered, then tightened. “If Mycroft can manage it—yes.” His voice was sharp and terse.

“Will I hear from them?”

Sherlock stood and walked to the front window. “Probably not.”

“I’m to take it on faith?” John’s voice rose, tight and unsteady. “Just—Sherlock, Mary’s my wife. Em’s my baby. Won’t I hear anything more?”

“I told you,” Sherlock growled, “You may hear they’re dead. I myself would not believe it until I saw the body—and perhaps not even then.” He searched restlessly. John’s eyes followed Sherlock’s as the man found first the antique, elegant hypodermic set, then the bottle of scotch on the bookshelf, and finally, as though finding a rescue boat during a ship-wreck, the violin case. Sherlock tucked the watch and keys into his trouser pockets, then gripped the case, flicking open the latches and easing the instrument out with an intensity that spoke of profound need.

“I won’t hear even when Mycroft comes back?” John knew he was whistling in the dark. He knew—but he couldn’t resist. The spymaster, after all, would return—he had to return.

“Don’t wait for him,” a voice said from the door of the flat—a rough, weary Estuary accent as common as London grit. Everyone turned to look.

Sherlock, studying the man, sighed. “You’re following, then?”

Lestrade’s eyes closed, struggling with some tight-held emotion. “Turned me away,” he said, and John noticed for the first time the drab, battered haversack by his ankles, stuffed full. “Told me to look for him when the wind changed…but you know how much or how little that means.” He opened his eyes again, expression ironic.

“Better than promising the back of the west wind,” Shetlock husked. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the watch. Lestrade sighed, heavily.

“Ah, lad… I’m sorry. I know you never wanted it.”

“Never,” Sherlock agreed. “Never, Bert.”

“Greg,” the other man growled.

Sherlock’s mouth quirked at one corner. “He took the umbrella, didn’t he?”

“Well—he certainly _kept_ it,” Lestrade said with a crooked, rueful grin. “But he _took_ the London Eye. All three of them—up and up and up, but when the wheel came around they were gone.”

“Such a traditionalist,” Sherlock grumbled. “You know he wanted a brolly with a parrot handle? If he could have made it fit into the stuffy-suit look, he’d have done it, too.”

“He was carrying a carpet bag today.”

“He would be.”

Sherlock ran his hands lovingly over the violin. He turned to the window, raised the instrument, and tucked it under his chin. He plucked delicately at the strings and began to tune.

“When you do see him, tell him I expect some help from time to time,” he growled as he worked.

Lestrade nodded. “Will do.”

Sherlock nodded. “Faithful,” he said, softly. “The real ones do manage to pick faithful friends. Did you give him a chimney-sweep’s kiss before he left? For luck?”

Lestrade laughed, but didn’t answer.

Mrs. Hudson huffed. “Some of us haven’t got all day to fuss over things,” she grumbled. “You—yes, you, Inspector—come down and help me with my garden basket. I want it hung before the wind switches around again.” She gathered the man up and dragged him with her.

“They’re gone,” John said, blankly. It wasn’t clear if he meant Mary and the baby, or Mycroft, or Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson, or all of them. Not that it mattered—it was equally true regardless.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, softly. “They’re gone.”

“Did he leave to save them?”

“Yes.”

“And they won’t be back?”

Sherlock made a sound that might have been a sob strangled unborn. “No,” he said. “They won’t be back. Not for us.”

“I think I’ll make some more tea,” John said, shattered and empty and weary to the bone.

Sherlock nodded, and began to play gently.

John brewed his tea, not bothering with getting one for Sherlock—the man would be tied to that fiddle for hours to come. He lit the fire—the night was cool, the warmth of the afternoon fading quickly. He settled into the old, familiar curves of his armchair. He drank the tea, blank and shaken, tears welling, dropping, drying, only to rise again silent against Sherlock’s playing.

They were gone. Mary and Em were gone.

He was on his third mug when he wondered, uneasily, what it meant to Sherlock that Mycroft was gone, too…apparently as completely as Mary and Em were gone. The two brothers had bickered endlessly, but John couldn’t easily imagine either without the other. It was the end of an era.

Sherlock’s music moved and swirled, moodily.

John frowned….

“I know that melody. What’s… wasn’t that on telly? Years back?”

Sherlock shrugged. “Old. My family likes it.”

The way he said “my family” set John’s nape prickling and goosebumps rising. It spoke of Mycroft. It spoke of something…more.

“Oh,” he said. “What’s it called?”

“Over the Hills and Far Away,” Sherlock said—and didn’t speak again for the rest of the night. Instead he played and played, eyes gazing through the window into the eastern sky over London, as though if he looked closely enough he’d find the floating speck of a kite, or an umbrella sent aloft—and if he could find the string he could drag it back safe to land. But the night was dark, and the sky empty of everything but planes, and by morning all hope was gone. The watch weighed heavy in Sherlock’s pocket. Even though the wind had switched again, the deed was done, and a tiny bit of Britain’s magical heritage had passed into new hands as Mary and Mycroft and little Baby Em disappeared into a different realm entirely.

 

Here are two of several versions of “Over the Hills and Far Away.” Both seem right for a Mycroft descended of the line of Mary Poppins: the first is a nursery song that sings a bit wistfully of the wind, far away, blowing one’s top-knot off—and somehow always seeming to blow the singer away into distant lands, too. The second is the weary, worldly song of a soldier in the King’s service, sent to fulfill his duty, wherever it may lie.

In my imagination Mycroft’s departure combines the wistful beauty of Mary Poppins leaving her charges when her time is done, disappearing into the sky, or off a carousel, with the honor and battered dignity of a soldier whose very leaving embodies duty—to the nation, to the family, and to the world at large. He rescues Mary and the baby as he goes, and leaves a very unwilling brother to take up the heritage of the clan.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MR7VihPm2E>

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOeYPpOblAw

 


End file.
